A Definitive Selection of Landmark Writings by the Master Builders of Western Thought. Edited and with a General Introduction and Commentaries by Robert Paul Wolff.
In its vast scope, this book presents the continuum of Western philosophy. Ranging from ancient Greece to nineteenth-century America, it traces the history of our civilization through the seminal works of its most influential thinkers. Each philosopher in this volume made intellectual history; each created a revolution in ideas; each reaffirmed man's view of himself as a sentient being capable of creating order out of the baffling contradictions of existence. And the most powerful reflections and speculations of each are represented here.
Content: Plato "Apology, Crito and the Death of Socrates, from Phado", Aristotle "Poetics", St. Ansem "The ontological Proof of St. Ansem, from Proslogium", St. Thomas Aquinas "St. Thomas' Proofs of God's Existence, from the SummaTheologica", Rene Descartes "Meditations on the First Philosophy", David Hume "An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding", Immanuel Kant "Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics", John Stuart "Mill Utilitarianism", William James "The Will to Believe".
